


Note to Self: You're Going to Forget All This

by heddychaa



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Futurefic, M/M, Romance, post-coe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-26
Updated: 2010-09-26
Packaged: 2017-10-12 05:36:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/121375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heddychaa/pseuds/heddychaa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three thousand years later, Jack doesn't remember much about the leather strap he wears around his wrist;  all he knows is that the device inside it needs to be repaired as soon as possible. Every year that passes he finds himself forgetting more and more, his mind collapsing under the weight of his own prolonged existence. So he does his best to follow the clues his younger self leaves him in the hopes they'll lead him somewhere that makes sense again. For now, that means one date, expressed as coordinates: 2009-08-23.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Note to Self: You're Going to Forget All This

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [When Taken Apart](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/1563) by amand_r. 



> Have some bitter-sweet romance! Double-teamed by azn_jack_fiend and _lullabelle_ who whipped it into shape and even had the decency to call the next morning.

In the early fifty-one-hundreds, he finally finds someone who can repair the little device inside his wrist-strap.

"Your vortex manipulator," she calls it, unfastening it from his wrist with nimble grease-covered fingers, eyes full of flirtation. He has been calling it "What needs to be repaired" inside his head. To help him remember what it's there for. Lots of things slipping him by, now. Like that name she just called him, just now, smiling and biting her lip, touching the hair that sweeps over her ear. There was a time, wasn't there, when he used all sorts of different names, but not anymore.

Now it's just "Jack". Jack Jack Jack Jack Jack all the time. Jack so often it doesn't even sound like a word anymore. But he remembers Jack. He remembers Satellite 5 and being Jack and dying and then breathing again, and that's something. It really is.

Here and now he watches the hands of the mechanic under the magnifying glass, tinkering with the vortex manipulator. Her screwdriver is cherry red.

Cherry red. What a pointless frustrating thing to remember, out of all the things his mind forgets. Cherries are long gone by the early fifty-one-hundreds and have taken their colour with them, but Jack remembers cherry red.

"I don't know who broke this, but they did _not_ want it fixed," the mechanic says, puffing her fringe off her forehead.

No. It has to be repaired. It can't not be repaired, that's its _purpose_ , that's why it's _there_.

She must see the expression on his face, because she indulges him with a pitying smile. "Oh, sweetheart, don't worry, if anyone can get it up and running it's me. Why the stress, though? Can't you just request a replacement? Unless—did you steal this? Are you not a Time Agent anymore?"

He shakes his head and smiles a coy smile at her over the magnifying glass, which she matches.

It's true, though; he's not a Time Agent anymore. He doesn't remember being a Time Agent in the first place. It's been getting surreal lately, meeting all these people who know some different version of him, some version long dead and forgotten. Sometimes they fuck him. Sometimes they shoot him. Sometimes they fuck him and then shoot him, leaving him to wonder just who he used to be.

Suddenly, she lets out a whoop of triumph. "I told you!" she says. "I told you I could fix it, didn't I?" She beams a smile at him, and he responds in kind. His heart is throbbing in his chest. Now what? For three thousand years he's been carrying around the What-Needs-To-Be-Repaired, and now he's done it. What's the next step? Where does he go? He has a thrill of cold terror run through him at the thought that maybe his younger self assumed that he'd know what to do, that it would be too important to forget. Nothing is too important to forget.

"Huh, seems there's some old coordinates logged in here. Do you want me to clear them out?"

"No," he replies, trying to disguise the quaking that runs over his body. "No, I'll just take it as-is."

He pays her. Tugs the wrist-strap from her hands. The coordinates are 2009-08-23. When he hits the button to jump, a saved message appears dated 2083.

It says "Ret-con him."

He remembers ret-con, too. He carries a dose around in his pocket. He never empties his pockets, because he never knows what might be significant. Receipts, photographs, ticket stubs, bits of electronics, and a single dose of ret-con in a baggy, enough to simulate a night of heavy drinking.

The man who forgets remembers his forgetting pill. For a while there, he thought that maybe he was in some kind of Philip K. Dick short story where every night he takes the pill and replaces it with an identical new one, damning himself to his own cycle of amnesia for reasons he never remembers come morning. But he gave up that theory when he realized that it's much more reasonable that when a man gets to be three thousand years old the information just gets to be too much for one brain to handle.

"I put my number in there for you," the mechanic tells him from under her eyelashes, and he winks and thanks her. Hits the button again, no message this time. Feels his body falling through time.

When he opens his eyes, he's standing in a living room. There's a sofa and a stereo. Jack recognizes these things. He recognizes a twenty-first century television playing on mute. He can hear someone moving about in another room; there's the sound of sloshing water, clattering dishes. For some reason, he's rooted to this spot, unwilling to move, unwilling to disturb what he's found here. Something about this seems right just the way it is. He feels an overwhelming urge just to leave everything here in peace, but it's too late for that. He hears footsteps padding toward him.

"Jack?"

There's a man standing there at the doorway, socked-feet, t-shirt and boxers, Jack recognizes these things, not just their generalities but these specific socks, that specific t-shirt, damp and clinging to the man's stomach where he's been leaning over the sink.

"What are you doing here? I thought you had a conference. You should be in London."

He recognizes the t-shirt with its blocky slogan letters, but he does not recognize the man, his scrutinizing face or his hand reaching up to scratch at the back of his head.

He needs to say something.

"I came to see you," he says.

He isn't sure. Maybe he's here to see this man and his t-shirt; maybe he's here to see this flat and its boxy television.

"What," the man says, taking a step toward him, tentative, watching his eyes. "What are you wearing? You almost pass for normal, in that."

Jack looks down at himself, at the tight hyperblue shirt and grey jeans, the belt he nicked off a very nice bloke he shared an exceptionally comfortable bed with a couple weeks back. Almost pass for normal? Other than the pockets _cum_ time capsules, he's as normal as it gets.

"Don't you feel naked without your coat?" the man jokes, like he's hoping there's something buried in there Jack will understand. His voice is nervous. Does he make snide comments when he's nervous? Is that what he's like?

"I dunno, don't you feel naked without your suit?" Jack quips back. It's an automatic response, and when he says it his hand flies to his mouth. He suddenly has an image of this man dressed up trim and sharp, smiling over his shoulder, holding a coffee cup, a gun, a clipboard, a stopwatch. The memories flash by so fast Jack isn't sure they aren't just leftover dreams.

He did, though. Come here for this man. That much is sure.

He looks around the apartment for some clue, like he's done a million times before when he's been somewhere or seen someone familiar and yet forgotten. An unopened letter or bill discarded on a side table, an ID, a note scribbled somewhere to remind someone of something. But the man's compulsively neat; the flat holds none of the normal detritus of day-to-day existence, every surface ordered straight.

"Jack are you alright?" the man asks and takes those last steps forward, putting a hand on Jack's shoulder, fingers curling over the back of his neck, thumb brushing his collarbone to soothe. Jack can see fear in his expression, but he's swallowing it down, using touch to suppress it. The touch is as much for him as it is for Jack. The touch is warm and damp and he's felt it a million times and never.

The smell of him, now that he's near. Jack recognizes it. Dish-soap -- under that cologne, under that sleep-sweat and masturbation, the perpetual smells of being young and male. Jack fights back the urge to gather him close, breathe in the smell of his hair, his neck, his chest, his belly, his cock, the backs of his knees, anything. The memories connected to smell are stronger than others: sometimes he'll smell gunpowder or electricity or fresh-cut grass or ozone and he'll see faces, remember whole scenes. They don't make sense, just like snatches of dreams that come to you in mid-afternoon, but he holds them.

"Jack," the man says, voice firm and wary now, like he's talking to a child. He's heard that tone before. "What happened to you?"

How can he explain what he's gone through, where he's been, what's happening to him now?

"Years," he says. "Years and years."

The hand on his collarbone squeezes him. "How long, Jack? How long has it been for you?"

"Almost three thousand years," Jack replies.

 _Why now? What's the damn point?_

And then he's pushed up against a wall – a picture frame hanging there jabs his skull and then clatters to the floor – and Ianto's mouth is on him, not always hitting his mouth, but enough times to suggest that's what he's aiming at. The insistent kisses bruise the sides of his mouth, tug his lips, rasp against the stubble on his chin and upper lip. Elbows pin his shoulders, hands touch his hair, a tongue lashes against his own writhing ferocious. He feels the damp of the t-shirt soaking into his own stomach, feels Ianto's stomach muscles heaving, his whole body forcing Jack up against the wall as though if he's not pinned down he'll rise up and blow away like a plastic bag.

Plastic bags: Jack remembers plastic bags. And Jack remembers Ianto Jones, and why it was worth waiting three thousand years to see him again.

 

"You're going to die," Jack says, now that they're naked and curled up in each other, and it doesn't quite feel familiar but Jack can vaguely remember this bed, remember the feel of Ianto's back against his chest, remember the feel of Ianto's earlobe toying between his fingers.

"I know," Ianto says. He sounds comfortable with it. "You're immortal and I'm, well, I'm not. 'Who wants to live forever', all that."

"No," Jack says, because there's something else, something else he's not _remembering_ , some scene of the dream that's fallen out of place, some jump between here and then where he knows something's missing. "No, I think it's soon. I think that's why I'm here."

"Oh," Ianto says, and Jack feels him stiffen just that little bit. How could Jack have ever forgotten him, ever have forgotten those little knits of his brow, those little twitches of his mouth and tightenings of his muscles that betray all his emotions?

"I'm supposed to ret-con you," he admits. "I left myself a note."

"Oh," Ianto says. Jack hears the sound of one of Ianto's fingers tracing a pattern along the sheets.

He only has the one tablet. Enough to erase tonight. But maybe it's just a reminder. Maybe he's supposed to find more. Torchwood must have more. That's how he knows Ianto, isn't it, Torchwood? They worked for Torchwood together. Ret-con Ianto, blink away the last few years and save him from Torchwood. Save him from his death, and Jack.

"I think I'm here to save you," Jack tells him, heart beating fast.

Ianto rolls in the bed, onto his back, so he can look Jack in the eye.

"I don't think you are, Jack." He sounds so sure, and Jack just sounds desperate.

"Then why am I here?" Jack asks, grabbing Ianto's shoulder and giving it a rough shake. "Tell me that!"

Ianto reaches up, rests a hand over Jack's on his shoulder, loosening Jack's grip with a smoothing of his fingers. "Saying goodbye?" he guesses gently. Why's he the one doing the comforting? He's the one who just learned he's about to die.

"I don't want to say goodbye, I've only just met you," Jack says, and leans his head so that his forehead touches Ianto's neck sweat-to-sweat.

"How do you think I feel?" Ianto asks, and laughs on the edge of crying.

 

And then just like that it's nearly morning and they're in Ianto's living room, Ianto on the couch and Jack kneeling at his feet.

Jack holds his hand and kisses his knuckles when he tongues the pill and drinks the glass of water.

"Does he love you? Your Jack?" he asks, watching as Ianto's head lolls on his shoulders, the pill taking hold. Jack grabs him by the upper arm to keep him awake. Just a little longer.

"Dunno," Ianto slurs. "Never talked about it much." His eyes are already glazing. Now's the time, Jack thinks. If he's here to say goodbye, if that's what his younger self intended, this is it.

"Nevermind him," Jack says, moving his hand from Ianto's shoulder to his cheek to hold his head upright. He manages one of his old grins, ignoring stinging eyes. "Because I do."

Ianto smiles dreamily, his grip on Jack's hand loosening.

"Jack was in Glasgow two months ago," he murmurs as he drifts off, "for the weekend. Thirteenth and fourteenth June. Ret-con's in the bathroom cabinet."

Just on the cusp of the ninetieth century, the man who still calls himself Jack for old time's sake finds a time-locked and encrypted file buried deep in his vortex manipulator's hard drive. It reads: "2009-06-13: His name is Ianto. Don't forget to ret-con him." He's not quite sure what it means, but that's never stopped him before.


End file.
